ISW is pleased to announce that the Interfaith Scholar Weekend Speaker for 2017 will be Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina, Professor and IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His interests include Classical Islam, Islam in the Modern Age, Democracy and Human Rights, Islamic Bioethics and Muslim Theology.
Abdulaziz Sachedina was born into an Indian Muslim family in Tanzania in 1942. He received BA degrees from Aligarh Muslim University (in Islamic Studies) in Aligarh, India, and Ferdowsi University (in Persian language and literature) in Mashhad, Iran. In addition, he studied Islamic jurisprudence at the Madrasa of Ayatollah Milani in Mashhad. He received the MA and PhD degrees in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation was entitled The Doctine of Mahdiism in Imami Shi’ism: A Study of Doctrinal Evolution in the 9th and 10th Centuries.
He is a core member of the Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism Project in the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Preventive Diplomacy Program and a key contributor to the program’s efforts to link religion to universal human needs and values in the service of peace-building. He serves on the board of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.
Professor Sachedina has also served on the advisory board of the Center for Bioethics of the University of Virginia, on the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics, and as director of the Organization for Islamic Learning. He was recently elected honorary professor at the Shahid Behishti Medical University, Tehran, Iran.
Mark your calendar now to join us on February 24-26, 2017!